SubscribeMon 31 Dec 2007
I got my girlfriend an iPod Touch for Christmas. Her Palm Pilot and iPod Nano were both getting long in the tooth. I had given her the Palm Pilot for her birthday 3 years ago, and the Nano about 2 years ago as a Valentine gift. I thought the the Touch would be great replacement for both devices. I thought about the iPhone, but she’s on contract with Verizon. In addition much of her family and friends are on Verizon including myself. The touch seemed like a good compromise.
One problem currently with the iPhone and the iTouch is the lack of 3rd party applications. Apple has so far locked down the device, though it has promised to deliver an SDK in February. For those non-geeks in the audience, a SDK is a Software Development Kit, basically a set of tools and applications that allow programmers build programs for a given device. Without the SDK, programmers can’t officially build applications for the iPhone. This lack of an SDK and official support from Apple has meant a relative dearth of iPhone applications.
One of the programs my girlfriend uses on her Palm is inExpense. It’s a basic personal finance tracking program. It’s not much more than online checkbook, but it works great for her because she’s organized and meticulous. It’d be utterly useless for me as I’m neither organized or meticulous. I need things to be as automated as possible. I can’t be bothered with having to enter my expenses. My time is too valuable, or so I like to believe. The only available, non web, personal finance application I know of is PocketMoney which is in beta. Given that SDK is due for imminent release, I think it might be best to hold off a bit.
In all of this there is a larger issue of what the role of mobile personal finance applications are? Personally the only area I need to track is my cash expenditures, but at the same time I do like the idea of tapping into my overall financial picture on the go. Realistically however, there’s really no reason for me to know exactly what my net worth is at any given time. If my sense is off by a couple hundred dollars that’s not make or break. In my younger years knowing what my balance was on any given day would’ve been more important. I think a good portable personal finance application augments a larger system. For example while I don’t use Quicken anymore being able to note cash transaction on the go and then being able to reconcile them within Quicken is a useful feature.
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January 10th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I have an iPhone and third party apps still scare me. Reason being when the next firmware update happens, all data on the phone gets wiped out. Pocketmoney, from what I’ve seen, is a local app. That means that all data is stored on the iPhone (or iTouch) itself. So unless you make sure to back that up then come new firmware update all that data is going bye bye. Now having to reinstall pigshooter and sketches (two other third party apps) doesn’t bother me, and contacts will sync again. but I don’t want to lose all the data I’ve entered.
I had a palm before the iPhone as well. My checkbook of choice on there was called “checkbook”. I still used it for the longest time because there was no way of doing it on the iphone. I then found clearcheckbook.com . It’s a simple online account manager, but it’s feature I’ve been using a lot is their “clearcheckbot” which lets you use shortcodes and text a message for transactions. For example I send a text message (you have to use the clearcheckbot: part) “clearcheckbot: w 30.25 ck g gas for my pinto” and it will withdraw 30.25 from my checking (ck) account, place it in the category Gas (g) with the description “gas for my pinto”. It’s still not as good the Checkbook app I used on the palm, but at least now it’s not inconvenient for me to track expenses, which is important if I’m going to use it
August 7th, 2008 at 12:01 am
There is a great new application in the iTunes App store for iPhone and iPod touch personal finance. It is called QuickBank.
http://quickbankapp.com/
QuickBank is a fast, easy and powerful personal finance application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Entering a transaction with QuickBank takes only seconds, allowing you to add more details when you have the time. QuickBank works great on its own, but it can also share account information with popular desktop applications such as Quicken and Microsoft Money!